La Salle Track Coach Charles Torpey Dies At 58

Charles Torpey had been involved with La Salle running for nearly 20 years. Photo: grfx.cstv.com

Charles Torpey had been involved with La Salle running for nearly 20 years. Photo: grfx.cstv.com

He had been supervising a workout when he suffered an apparent heart attack.

The head of La Salle University’s men’s and women’s track and field and cross-country programs, Charles Torpey, has passed away. He was 58 years old. Torpey had been involved with La Salle’s running programs since 1994.

He died of an apparent heart attack on Friday.

Torpey had just finished supervising a workout with Sean Quigley, who is training for a spot on the 2012 Olympic team, when he collapsed. Quigley had left his coach for a cooldown run and when he returned, he saw medics putting a person into an ambulance.

“I came back and saw an ambulance and cop cars, and I saw they were doing CPR on somebody in the ambulance,” Quigley recalled. “When I didn’t see Charlie, I thought it might be him.”

Former La Salle runner Brian Gallagher set up a memorial run for his former coach this past weekend.

“[Torpey] was certainly knowledgeable,” Gallagher remembers. “He tried to figure out who you were, understand you, and you were able to achieve a lot of great things.”

Under Torpey, Gallagher became the first La Salle runner to break the four-minute mile.

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